Emergency Blog (kind of): Alpine is adding fuel to the fire

I thought about posting this blog about this entire situation during our normal time on Sunday but considering how quickly this all went down it does constitute emergency blog status. I am not shocked at the Alpine F1 Organization for being such a mess, so really I find this be a bit underwhelming and a bit stupid honestly. I wouldn’t consider it an emergency when it’s something I would come to expect from them.

For those who have had their heads in the sand, been off social media, or have been living in a cave for the last week, Alpine decided to pour lighter fluid on their already burning organization. They had their Team Principal Oliver Oakes resign from his position on May 6th with immediate effect. Many believe this is because Oakes was backing rookie driver Jack Doohan to keep his spot as the second driver on the team. This comes after the rumors started coming out after Jack’s tumultuous Miami GP weekend that he may be replaced as soon as the next grand prix in Imola.

So, as discussed in many other blogs before, swapping drivers in this sport is not something that comes as a shock but normally a team principal backed driver would be considered a rather solid person to have in your corner when it comes to seat security. This causes one to speculate whether there other factors at play with differences in the vision and trajectory of the team that caused Oakes to resign.

As if this weren’t already a terrible PR moment for the Alpine team. They did something so spectacularly horrible that I truly had to sit and laugh. They took the fire that was already raging due to adding lighter fluid and decided, hey why not stick a giant fan in front of the fire to make sure there is no part of the building left standing. In their official statement the team announced that their acting team principal is Flavio Briatore. Now, many of you will have no idea who that is, so sit down class is now in session on the brief history of this man.

Flavio Briatore is an Italian businessman who was convicted on several counts of fraud in the 1980’s which resulted in him receiving 2 prison sentences but thanks to amnesty had them dropped. While a fugitive in the Virgin Islands, he was busy setting up several United Colors of Benetton franchises. He was promoted to the acting managing director of the Benetton F1 team and was able to secure them Michael Schumacher, leading him to 2 WDC in 1994 & 1995 and the team to a WCC in 1995. During the 1994 season, the Benetton team had several cheating accusations against them. During his time at Renault they were found guilty in the F1 espionage scandal in 2007. Leading us to 2008, where he was found guilty of race fixing thus banning him FIA sanctioned events indefinitely and banning him from managing drivers who participate in FIA competitions. This brings us to last season where he was named as an executive advisor to Alpine F1 and has now assumed the acting team principal role. There is so much more to this mans lore but I have found I have hit all of the major essential plot points necessary to paint a proper picture of what Alpine is rocking with.

All of this leads us to the morning of May 7th where they made the official announcement that they are replacing Jack Doohan with Franco Colapinto. For the sake of the fire analogy, this is like getting a squirt gun and attempting to help put out the fire. Franco is truly a paddock favorite and the people’s princess who put up solid efforts in the Williams last season, so there were some head scratches when he was only signed as a reserve driver for this season. The stipulations of Franco’s contract only guarantee him to be with us on track for 5 races. That’s correct. Not the rest of the season. But 5 of the 18 remaining races. Now, what Alpine attempts to do after that I am sure will cause so much confusion and someone will need to explain it to me like I’m a toddler but for everyone’s sake, Franco please put that car on pole or something, I’m tired.

This makes me feel like a broken record but I don’t understand how these teams expect the rookies to be able to showcase their ability to actually be competitive when their organization is in shambles or there is issues with the car. In Alpines case, it’s both so switching out your rookie driver after 6 races for another rookie in the middle of team principal turnover and expecting different results, at the end of the day is going to cost you ridiculous amounts of money. These issues we are seeing on track and on the paddock ultimately stem from the behind the scenes organizational problems from the top down. I hope that this trend that Red Bull started of throwing rookies out after 5 races isn’t a permanent fixture of the sport because I truly don’t grasp how anyone could make that a sustainable practice in this sport because at some point you’re going to run out of options and car development is going to ultimately suffer.

Yes, there has been a lot of narratives spread about this whole debacle and there will continue to be as the smoke clears (fire analogy work with me) but once this is all settled we will more than likely see Fernando Alonso, Esteban Ocon, and Oscar Piastri dancing on Alpines ashes with a lot of F1 fans and personnel joining them..

Everyone except Alpine F1 team - have a wonderous Wednesday , talk soon.

Ily a milli